“It must be four miles away,” Mrs. Wilbur answered.
“Rebellious nature,” murmured Erard, glancing at Mrs. Wilbur. “An uncaged element goes roaring forth, hotly devouring the idle works of man.”
“A year ago,” Mrs. Wilbur remarked, “when the strikers set fire to the cars on the Panhandle tracks, it was more awful. It was a hot July night and the city had been lowering all day; no one knew what might happen. Suddenly at dusk the whole horizon flamed up with a fierce streak of red. Imagine the mobs of men and women hooting about the flaming cars and the soldiers driving them back. Such terrible naked passions came to the surface!”
“Yes,” Molly Parker assented. “I never knew before how necessary it is for us all to behave ourselves; how little it would need to smash this civilization we take for granted.”
“Chicago had a chance to see what democracy really is,” Erard scoffed. “It’s like dynamite. Everything is placid until you drop it; then there is an upheaval and the sky gets lurid. The question is how much of this social dynamite you can carry without dropping it.”
“I can’t see what Chicago has to do with it,” Molly Parker retorted defiantly.
“Only that there is rather more dynamite here than in most places. The average man is your tin-god. When some day there are too many average men, and they all think stupidly that they have the same rights to an average kind of easy living, why, you’re going to have a portentous row, for a democracy is at the bottom irreligious and unidealistic. The ‘people’ will not starve patiently and pathetically while the successful neighbour builds his palace.”
“Well,” Miss Parker announced finally, “the less talk about it the better. I guess Chicago will find a way out of its troubles. And I like the men who put their shoulders to the democratic wheel; it’s the only one that goes to-day anyhow.”
Erard laughed indifferently. The smoke was rolling up now a purple black, shot occasionally with cardinal red.
“I believe I will wander over there. I should like to get the effect of that tawny colour near at hand.”